


Does Weary Mean Wiser?

by embroiderama



Category: White Collar
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, Snow, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Neal's business trip to Chicago was supposed to double as a quick, romantic getaway, but thanks to Chicago's weather and Peter's immune system, it wasn't quite either of those things. Surprisingly enough, Neal didn't really mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Does Weary Mean Wiser?

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [](http://theatregirl7299.livejournal.com/profile)[**theatregirl7299**](http://theatregirl7299.livejournal.com/)'s [prompt](http://whitecollarhc.livejournal.com/118436.html?thread=974500#t974500) at the [](http://whitecollarhc.livejournal.com/profile)[**whitecollarhc**](http://whitecollarhc.livejournal.com/) Fever Fest II and also for the "snowed in" square on my [](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/)**trope_bingo** card. Title from "Travelling Again" by Dar Williams. (And regarding other things I should be finishing/posting: working on them. /0\\)

Neal knew it was ridiculous, that he should be so excited about a trip to Chicago. The Windy City wasn't among his favorite destinations even in the best circumstances, and on this trip he was unlikely to see much of anything that didn't involve the case that had been assigned to Peter and, by extension, him. On the other hand, the only time Neal had been out of the tri-state area in the last seven years had been his headlong flight out of the country with Mozzie and then the miserable slog back with Peter and Collins and Dobbs. Neither trip had been the highlight of his years of travel, and as bizarre as it seemed Neal was more than happy to be taking a business trip to Chicago.

Peter wasn't pleased--not with the trip itself and not with Neal's excitement. Neal did his best to relax but every now and then he had to let himself twitch like a ten year-old on his way to Disney World. The only thing that kept him from indulging full-stop was the fact that Peter truly was not happy. Peter was the consummate professional, and when the powers that be had handed him the assignment to go consult on a case in Chicago he had accepted it without complaint. Peter didn't say anything about the cold he'd been fighting or the fact that he'd rather have spent his evening resting instead of packing for an early morning flight. He didn't say it to management or to Neal, but Neal knew anyway.

The one bright spot was that they'd been upgraded to business class for their flight. Their legs were still cramped and their shoulders still bumped together, but at least Neal tried to make the best of the latter. The flight was too public of a place for them to truly show their affection, but the enforced lack of personal space meant that nobody was likely to notice the way Neal slipped his hand back behind Peter's lower back or to judge the way Peter had fallen asleep against Neal's shoulder less than an hour into the flight.

Peter woke with a sniffle and a groan just as the plane started its descent, the airport still away in the distance. "Morning," Neal said quietly, trying not to smile as Peter rubbed his hand over his face like a sleepy kid.

"Is it still morning?" Peter pressed his hand against the side of his head and frowned.

"Headache?"

Peter nodded. "It'll go away. I'll take something after we land."

After that, Peter was quiet, and Neal stopped trying to make conversation when he saw the tense set of Peter's jaw and the way Peter's frown deepened as the plane descended closer to the ground. Neal was looking at the landscape and buildings below when he heard a low, small grunt and looked over to see Peter holding his hand to the side of his head again, his face drawn and his eyes closed. Neal turned as much as he could with the seatbelt on, and put his hand on Peter's forearm. "Hey, look at me."

Peter slowly opened his eyes but stayed silent.

"You think this is your sinuses? Or is something else going on?"

Peter gave a small nod to the first question and a shake to the second then closed his eyes again.

Neal rubbed his hand over the wool blend of Peter's sleeve and reached into his inside jacket pocket for the pack of gum he usually had on hand. He popped a piece out of its blister-pack and tapped it against Peter's hand. "Here, chew this. It should help."

Peter opened his eyes and glared at the piece of gum, but finally he took it and put it in his mouth. After a few chews, Neal saw Peter's shoulders relax somewhat and the tense lines in his face smoothed out. The plane was nearing the ground, but Peter leaned into Neal's shoulder and sighed quietly. "Thanks," he said, his voice rough. He stayed there leaning into Neal until the plane landed with a jolt.

While they were waiting for permission to deplane, Neal looked at Peter, who was clearly miserable even if he didn't seem to be in pain anymore. "You shouldn't have come if you're this sick. I can't believe El didn't tie you to the bed."

"You know we save that stuff for when you come over. Anyway, it was just the flight. We're here, I already feel better, and aside from the interesting case I didn't want to pass up on the opportunity for a couple of days out of town with you."

Peter's words pleased Neal more than he was willing to show. "Oh, really?"

"Well, you know, El and I go out of town without you, and I figured we could at least go out somewhere nice for dinner and then make the most of squeezing together into one bed, since getting a king room wouldn't go over well on my expense report. El got us reservations for tonight, somewhere that's probably very expensive and strange."

"I like the way you think," Neal said, but what he didn't say was, _if we make it to those dinner reservations, it'll be a miracle._

~~~

The day went about as well as Neal expected. Their flight was so early that with the time difference they arrived in the Chicago FBI office early enough to pick up some breakfast, but Peter stuck mostly to his coffee. The case was fascinating and getting his hands on some of the lab equipment was a great opportunity, but Neal couldn't enjoy it when he was always aware of Peter, nearby and exuding a general sense of unwellness. When the team broke for lunch, Neal and Peter went to check in to their hotel room and Neal insisted on stopping to pick up lunch, including soup for Peter.

Peter, still nursing a headache, was uncharacteristically short with the woman who checked them in at the hotel and deflected Neal's concern. In the elevator, Neal couldn't keep from watching Peter in his peripheral vision. When Peter wavered on his feet and slapped his hand against the elevator wall for balance, Neal steadied him with a hand on his bicep. Neal's heart raced--there was no way he'd be able to hold Peter up if he passed out--but Peter steadied himself and literally shook off Neal's hand.

"Hey," Neal said, "pardon me for not wanting you to brain yourself in this stainless steel box."

"I'm fine," Peter said emphatically, glancing sideways at the other person in the elevator, a college-age guy in a hoodie and sunglasses who was probably too hungover to remember his own phone number much less notice the minor drama taking place next to him.

"Right." Neal shook his head, and when the elevator reached his floor he walked off toward their assigned room, leaving Peter to follow. Neal was pretty sure he'd hear Peter if he took a header, and the carpet was thick enough to keep him from injuring his stubborn head. By the time he got to the door of their room, Neal had walked off enough of his frustration that he felt guilty but when he looked back Peter was only a few yards behind him, slogging along without his usual confident energy.

Peter sighed as they walked into the room. "I'm sorry about that."

"You're forgiven." Neal put his hand on Peter's face and frowned. "And you have a fever."

"I'm fine, your hands are just cold from outside. It's freezing."

"It's really not. Look, I'll hang up our clothes, you go eat your soup. I can eat on the way back to the office if we run out of time."

Peter looked mulish, but he didn't argue. He took the take-out bag with the container of soup and crackers over to the desk, and Neal went about putting their clothes in the closet and their toiletries in the bathroom. Despite, or maybe because of, the amount of traveling he'd done, Neal wasn't fond of living out of suitcases. He liked to spread out and settle into a hotel room, and if their room wasn't the Presidential Suite at the Four Seasons it was nonetheless a nice enough room.

When everything was put away, Neal looked over to see Peter sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. "Peter?" Neal walked over and put his hand on Peter's upper back, noticing that the container of soup was halfway eaten. "What's going on?"

Peter swallowed hard, his back tensing up under Neal's hand.

"Are you going to be sick?"

Peter shook his head, but he breathed in and out through his nose in a metered, shaky rhythm, and Neal kept one hand on the ice bucket, just in case. After a tense few minutes, Peter sat up and leaned against the back of the chair. He looked at the remains of the soup and put the lid back on with a shudder. "I--I really don't feel well."

"Yeah, I got that," Neal said gently. "Does it feel like the flu or--"

"It's my ear." Peter held his hand an inch away from his right ear. "It feels clogged up, and everything sounds a little bit underwater."

 _And it hurts._ Neal heard the words, even if Peter didn't say them. An ear infection made sense, from Peter's headache on the plane to his dizziness in the elevator. "I'm sorry." Neal rubbed his hand across Peter's shoulders, and Peter leaned into the touch.

"Damn it," Peter whispered, then rubbed his hands over his face and looked at his watch. "We need to get back to the office."

"I need to get back there. You should stay here and rest."

"I'm sure the Marshals would love the idea of you running free in Chicago."

Neal rolled his eyes, glad Peter couldn't see him. He understood logically that these were the rules, this was his punishment, but the constant mistrust chafed when Neal had made his decision. He wasn't going to run again.

"Hey." Peter took Neal's free hand and rubbed Neal's palm with his thumb. "That's the Marshals, not me. You should know that."

"Yeah," Neal said, and he surprised himself by realizing it was true. "So, there has to be another way to do this that doesn't involve dragging you back out into the cold."

Neal ate his lunch while Peter reluctantly made a few phone calls, and within half an hour Peter was climbing into bed while Neal went down to the hotel lobby to meet the local agent who had been sent to collect him. She seemed to resent the chauffeur duty so Neal gave up on trying to make friends and texted El. _Peter's sick--ear infection probably. Doctor?_

El buzzed him back a minute later. _He swore it was just a cold! Fever?_

_I think so. He's resting in the room while I go try to finish the case._

_I'll let him rest for a while then call him. Let me know when you're done for the day. Love you!_

_Love you,_ Neal texted back, then slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket.

Back at the office, Neal tried to stay focused on the work in front of him. He knew that Peter wasn't seriously ill, but he didn't like thinking about Peter being sick and in pain, alone in an anonymous hotel room. Neal had been there, and he didn't wish that misery on Peter. The Chicago agents were markedly less friendly to Neal now that he was on his own, but they didn't go so far as to actually hassle him, and Neal didn't really care whether or not they wanted him there. He planned to do his job and solve the case so that he and Peter could go back to New York, and before the agent in charge of the case left for the day Neal did just that.

Neal turned over the information, accepted the man's perfunctory thanks, and asked for a ride back to the hotel. He texted El while waiting for his ride. _Case solved, on my way back to the hotel soon._

 _Oh good! I talked Peter into going to the doctor & I found an urgent care clinic with good reviews._ She sent the address and phone number of the clinic.

 _I'll get him there,_ Neal promised. He was expecting to have to coerce Peter into actually going to get checked out rather than just letting El believe that he had, but when he got up to the hotel room Peter was sitting on the side of the bed with his elbows on his knees. It seemed wrong that he had to put his suit back on when he was sick, but neither of them had brought any other clothes so Peter had on his suit without the tie. He looked like a travelling salesman on the tail end of a bender, but when Neal touched his forehead he was hot--hotter than earlier.

"Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah, okay." Peter stood up, looking slightly wobbly at first but then steadying himself. He trudged down the hallway next to Neal then sat in the cab looking vaguely nauseated, and all Neal could do was put a steadying hand on his thigh and hope for a smooth trip. Neal noticed a few icy snow flurries falling against the windows of the cab, and when they got out the flurries were blowing all around them. Peter put his hand over his ear, looking pained, and Neal nudged him toward the clinic door.

They were lucky, and the wait at the urgent care clinic was less than half an hour. The weather app on Neal's phone was predicting a snowstorm, and Neal didn't mention it to Peter, hoping that it would be yet another snowpocalypse that fizzled into slush. When the woman in blue scrubs called Peter back to the exam area, Neal felt a twinge of regret that he couldn't go back there with Peter, that it wouldn't be a good thing for appearances. Then again, he thought, Peter was a grown man and almost certainly wouldn't have let El go back with him to have a doctor poke around in his ear and prescribe antibiotics.

After another forty-five minutes of Neal reading magazines, Peter came out of the exam area looking more rumpled than when he'd gone in. Neal placed a quick call to make sure there would be a cab waiting for them then met Peter at the check-out desk and tried not-very-surreptitiously to read the paperwork as well as Peter's face. Underneath the tired sickness, Peter looked pissed off.

"What's going on. Did something--"

Peter held up his hand. "It's just an ear infection on top of a cold." He sighed heavily, frustrated.

"And?"

"And I'm not supposed to fly for the next three days. Apparently I could permanently damage my hearing, and that wouldn't go over very well with the Bureau." Peter rubbed at the side of his head. "But I really don't want to spend three days in a hotel."

"We'll figure something out. Do you have prescriptions?"

Peter nodded. "Antibiotics." He finished with the payment and paperwork and turned to Neal with a sigh. "Let's get out of here."

The cab Neal had called was waiting for them just outside the clinic doors, which was a very good thing considering that while they were inside the flurries had turned into real snow and begun to accumulate. Inside the cab, Peter sniffled and leaned his head back, clearly worn out by the process of getting examined. "Will you do me a favor?"

"Of course."

"If I let the Marshals believe I'm with you while you go to the drugstore, will you do your level best to avoid anything--even innocent, harmless things--that would lead to them finding out that I was in fact asleep while you cavorted about the Windy City?"

" _Cavorted?_ Really?" An ear infection wasn't enough to disable Peter's quelling glare, and Neal held up his hands, palms out. "I promise. Just give me the prescriptions and your insurance card, and I'll stay on the straight and narrow, one hundred percent."

"God help me," Peter muttered.

When they reached the hotel, Peter waved off Neal's attempt to see him up to the room and left him in the cab. Neal quizzed the driver about where he should go and then settled back in his seat as they crawled through traffic to the nearest Target. He exchanged a few texts with El and Mozzie, and when he got out of the cab in front of the store he was greeted by thick, swirling snow buffeting his face and wind whipping through his clothes. He could only hope that he got back to the hotel before the accumulation got deep enough to cause problems with the roads.

Inside, he dropped off Peter's prescription at the pharmacy and then went shopping. He picked up the over-the-counter supplies recommended on Peter's paperwork from the clinic then wheeled his cart through the grocery department. The hotel room had a small refrigerator and microwave, and if they ended up getting home the way Neal had in mind they'd want a supply of snacks for that as well. The other issue was clothing. He and Peter had both carried on garment bags, each of them with a spare suit and shirts plus underwear and socks, but aside from going out to dinner they hadn't expected to have any kind of downtime--at least not the kind of downtime they'd spend clothed.

Target wasn't exactly Neal's first choice for a clothier, but he was even less interested in having a cab taking him all over town in the snow, trying to find a better store that was still open. Back in the men's department he picked out flannel lounge pants and a few other pieces of casual clothes for both of them, along with sneakers because wearing casual clothes with designer Italian leather shoes was even worse than wearing them with cheap sneakers. Neal picked up Peter's antibiotics and paid for the rest of his haul then got another cab and started the slow trip back to the hotel.

Just for a moment, standing outside and taking a deep breath of the cold, snowy air, Neal looked around and thought about all the things the city had to offer, things he could have done before Peter gave in and called in his absence to the Marshals. He thought about the museums and the jewellers and the corporations with their expensive secrets, and the strangest thing was that all he really wanted to do was get back to Peter with his bags full of mass-produced junk. It was funny and terrifying and completely true.

Neal entered the room soundlessly, using the skills of stealth earned during his years on the complicated side of the law, but he found Peter awake. He was stripped down to his boxers and t-shirt, and he looked cold as he sat on the bed working on his laptop.

"You're sick, and we're about to be snowed in, I think you have a pretty good excuse for taking a break from work."

Peter sniffled deeply. "I just wanted to get the report filed before I forgot the details, but it's done now." he closed the laptop and pushed it aside. "Did you win a shopping spree or something? I thought you were going out to get antibiotics."

Neal hoisted his collection of red and white bags. "I had to wait for the prescription, and if we're going to be stuck we might as well be comfortable." He dropped the bags on the bed they weren't using and walked over to run his hand through Peter's hair and press a gentle kiss to his lips. "Or less uncomfortable, in your case."

Fifteen minutes later, the fridge and desk were stocked with food and drinks, including wine for Neal and juice and ginger ale for Peter, they were both changed into soft flannel pants and long-sleeved t-shirts, and Peter was dosed up with antibiotics and cold medicine. Neal made himself a sandwich for dinner and coaxed Peter into eating a small cup of soup, then he turned off most of the lights and climbed into bed next to Peter with some more supplies, including the extra pillow from the closet.

Peter was still sitting up, leaning back against the headboard, but he was fading. The nighttime cold medicine was hitting him hard on top of exhaustion and fever, but he was clearly uncomfortable and favoring his swollen ear.

"Hey," Neal said quietly, "are you awake enough to talk about plans?"

Peter nodded and sighed. "Do you think we're going to be able to get out of here tomorrow?"

"I doubt it, and you can't fly for three days anyway. If the snow weren't an issue I'd say we should take the train, try out one of those 'roomettes' and get home in a day. As it is, I think our best plan is to stay here until you're safe to fly."

"Damn it," Peter said, his voice rough. He was frustrated and exhausted, and Neal knew he wanted El and the comfort of his own bed.

"I'm sorry, Peter." Neal put the extra pillow on his lap and reached out to rub the back of Peter's neck. "Come here, get comfortable."

Peter looked like he was going to argue, but he gave in to his exhaustion and need for comfort and curled over to rest his head on the pillow in Neal's lap with his sore ear facing up. Neal picked up the small towel-wrapped gel pack he'd heated in the microwave and rested it over Peter's ear. Peter tensed for a moment, then sighed and relaxed, his shoulder leaning into Neal's thigh. On the bedside table, Neal had the remote control, his phone, a book, and some wine, but he found himself just sitting in the near-silence of the dimly lit room, his thumb drawing a half circle back and forth on Peter's shoulder. He thought Peter was asleep until he shifted a little on the pillow and murmured, "Neal?"

"Do you need something?"

Peter shook his head. "You know, right? You know that wanting home and El doesn't mean not wanting you?"

"Of course," Neal said, and it was almost the truth. Almost-almost. "Now shhh, sleep." He ran his fingers through Peter's hair until his breathing settled into a quiet, snuffly snore.

Neal spent a few hours reading then woke Peter enough to give him some more juice and Tylenol. He turned off the bedside light and slipped under the covers to curl up with Peter. At home, they rarely had the luxury of sleeping together, and Neal tried not to be grateful for the combination of work, snow and minor illness that would let him sleep in the same bed as Peter for three nights in a row.

He failed.


End file.
